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Axe ripped Fitzgerald’s patronage purge By: Kenneth P. Vogel December 9, 2008 07:08 PM EST Patrick Fitzgerald’s charges against Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich have drawn a chorus of shock and outrage. But Barack Obama’s message man David Axelrod once staked out a much more nuanced position on Fitzgerald’s anti-corruption crusade. In a 2005 op-ed, Axelrod argued, in effect, that trading political favors – including jobs – is part of the grease that makes government work. He ripped Fitzgerald at the time for trying “to use the criminal code to enforce (his) vision” of “entirely remov(ing) politics from government.” The piece...

The incoming Obama administration has notified all politically-appointed ambassadors that they must vacate their posts as of Jan. 20, the day President-elect Barack Obama takes the oath of office, a State Department official said. The clean slate will open up prime opportunities for the president-elect to reward political supporters with posts in London, Paris, Tokyo and the like. The notice to diplomatic posts was issued this week. Political ambassadors sometimes are permitted to stay on briefly during a new administration, but the sweeping nature of the directive suggests that Obama has little interest in retaining any of Bush's ambassadorial appointees.

300,000 Apply for 3,300 Obama Jobs By NEIL A. LEWIS WASHINGTON — Brenda Benton, a veteran media relations employee with the Los Angeles Police Department, is now part of a record-breaking political phenomenon. Ms. Benton was so thrilled with the election of Barack Obama as president that she has become one of about 300,000 people who have, so far, put themselves forward for posts in the new administration. At the equivalent time in the George W. Bush transition eight years ago, with his election still in dispute, there were about 44,000 applicants, according to Clay Johnson, who led the Bush...

The president of the Illinois Senate is sitting in his statehouse office, talking in gravelly tones about political strategies and counter-strategies. Out of nowhere, the theme from "The Godfather" begins playing. It turns out to be the ringtone on his cell phone - an appropriate song for the man who amounts to Barack Obama's political godfather. Emil Jones Jr. helped Obama master the intricacies of the Legislature. When Democrats took control of the state Senate, Jones, though he risked offending colleagues who had toiled futilely on key issues under Republican rule, tapped Obama to take the lead on high-profile legislative...

SANTA FE— Gov. Bill Richardson and leading state lawmakers quarreled Friday over a Legislative Finance Committee audit critical of the state Personnel Office. "Nitpicking" is how Richardson described the report released Thursday. ..." But lawmakers said the problems identified at the Personnel Office were significant, not trivial. One lawmaker even went so far as to attribute Richardson's testiness to presidential politics. "What do you expect from someone running for president. He wants to be untainted," said Rep. Luciano "Lucky" Varela, D-Santa Fe, the committee's vice chairman. "These are factual reports." The report said the Personnel Office had deviated from hiring...

The most dangerous job in America? Underground coal miner? Foundry worker? City workers with political clout claim to be injured at a rate that far exceeds any occupation tracked by the U.S. Department of Labor, according to a first-of-its-kind analysis by the Chicago Sun-Times that raises questions about whether all those city workers really were injured, and whether the city adequately investigates workplace accidents. Could so many patronage workers really be getting hurt on the job? Greg Krohm doesn't think so. "This is buffoonery," said Krohm, executive director of the International Association of Industrial Accident Boards and Commissions, in Madison,...

From the time Mayor Richard Daley took office, dozens of city department managers gathered before elections at the plumbers' union hall or other sites to get campaign marching orders from top mayoral aides, a former Daley loyalist testified Monday in the City Hall corruption trial. Donald Tomczak, a longtime Water Department official and veteran political operative, said he then would summon his top deputies to his office in the Jardine Filtration Plant to tell them which candidates would get help from hundreds of blue-collar city water workers. After elections, Daley aide Robert Sorich fielded requests for promotions from the political...

In contrast to recent revelations of national security leaks occurring within the CIA, consider the absurdly trivial and wholly unsubstantiated charges that ultimately drove House Majority Leader Tom Delay from office. After presenting a vapid case before numerous grand juries who could find absolutely no fault with Delay, Democrat Prosecutor Ronnie Earl finally landed one that was willing to hand down an indictment for violation of laws that did not exist at the time that Delay was accused of violating them. Despite this, Delay has since faced relentless attacks from the liberal political machine, abetted by the leftist media, insisting...

WASHINGTON - Harriet Miers withdrew her nomination to be a Supreme Court justice Thursday in the face of stiff opposition and mounting criticism about her qualifications. Bush said he reluctantly accepted her decision to withdraw, after weeks of insisting that he did not want her to step down. He blamed her withdrawal on calls in the Senate for the release of internal White House documents that the administration has insisted were protected by executive privilege. "It is clear that senators would not be satisfied until they gained access to internal documents concerning advice provided during her tenure at the White...

President Bush's nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court has divided the conservative movement. Initially, most conservatives, but not quite all, expressed disappointment with the nomination. Since then, paths have diverged. Some conservatives, having gone on record as wishing that Bush had chosen someone else, have now migrated back into the fold, pronounced Miers a qualified candidate, and defended her nomination as the president's prerogative. Other conservatives have continued to ratchet up their attacks on Miers. Nearly every day produces yet another instance of Miers's alleged incompetence, inexperience, or suspected liberal sympathies. Some of the criticisms of Miers are...

According to a Wall Street Journal/NBC poll, 54 percent of Americans think President Bush values party loyalty and personal friendship over competence. The poll was prompted, as if you didn’t know, by Bush’s habit of appointing friends and retainers to major jobs in his administration. Some of these seem qualified enough: Condi Rice, Alberto Gonzales. Others seem more questionable, none more so than Michael Brown and Harriet Miers. In one sense this is nothing new for Bush. From the start, his administration was marked by a web of family connections, and certain members of the press were quick to cry...

Illegal Patronage Probe Snares Ky. Gov. By MARK R. CHELLGREN, Associated Press Writer 3 minutes ago For the past few months, Republican Gov. Ernie Fletcher has been doing just about everything he can to fend off a criminal investigation into alleged political hiring-and-firing by his administration. But the investigation has steamed on, and appears to be getting closer to Fletcher himself. Eleven current or former members of his administration have been indicted so far in the probe by Kentucky's attorney general. And while there has been little or no evidence to publicly connect the governor to any wrongdoing, his efforts...

President Bush has divided conservatives with his choice of a “stealth” nominee for the Supreme Court who has no experience grappling with constitutional issues. But the conservative claim that we have insufficient guarantees that Harriet Miers is sufficiently conservative also reflects a conservative version of the kind of misunderstanding of the judiciary that liberals so frequently make. A plausible argument could be made that the greatest challenge in contemporary American politics is the restoration of judicial integrity. The only means for doing so is to appoint judges to the federal courts who are committed to applying the law as intended...

Two on Daley staff accused of doling out patronage jobs Feds say drunk, 'goofballs' hired; scandal moves closer to mayor July 20, 2005 CHICAGO (AP) -- One was a drunk. Some were laughed at as "goofballs." One was declared the best-qualified candidate for a job on the city payroll -- even though he was dead. All of them were recommended for city jobs or hired because they were politically connected and helped to get out the vote on Election Day, according to U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald. "That's the world we want to end," Fitzgerald said Monday in announcing charges...

Tom Foley is the emergency management coordinator for Atlantic City, a place that would make a juicy target for terrorists on a busy day when up to 260,000 people cram into town for some fun at the casinos. He is also a deeply frustrated man these days. Because he can't get his fair share of money from Trenton to buy the equipment he needs. His problem: The legislators who represent his city are all Republicans. And the pot of money has been controlled by Democrats. "This is a nightmare," Foley says. "Until they realize that Atlantic City needs this equipment,...

FRANKFORT - Attorney general's investigators, armed with search warrants, confiscated boxes of documents from the Capitol offices of two key aides to Gov. Ernie Fletcher yesterday as part of a widening investigation of Transportation Cabinet hiring practices. The team of investigators targeted Richard Murgatroyd, Fletcher's deputy chief of staff who last year served as second in command of the Transportation Cabinet, and Dave Disponett, the governor's unpaid political adviser and treasurer of the state Republican Party.

Top judge says Liberal appointees are clean NATIONAL POST Thursday, April 28, 2005 Brian Daly, Canadian Press MONTREAL -- A top Quebec judge has dismissed claims by a former federal Liberal executive that party-friendly lawyers were rewarded with judicial postings for their work during the 2000 election campaign. "We're fully independent,'' Michel Robert, chief justice of the Quebec Court of Appeal, told The Canadian Press. "We stop all political activities. We have a system where all appointees are scrutinized by an independent committee of seven people.'' Robert, a former president of the Liberal Party of Canada, said there's nothing...

After watching a Coca Cola advertisement this evening, I've decided to purchase goods or services only from advertisers using "Merry Christmas" in their commercials and advertisements. If they don't have the right Christmas spirit, I can't use their products. "Merry Christmas" Coca Cola - buy Please add your good guys to the list.

...But for the Republicans this is unadulterated good news. It vindicates "Jorge" Bush's hunch that aggressively pursuing the Hispanic vote would pay off. His familiarity with Mexican-Americans in Texas formed in him an instinct.... The Hispanic entry into Republican ranks comes, for many, at an earlier phase in their American journey than for other immigrant groups. Just think of the Irish, Italians and Jews, who generations after arrival on these shores can still reflexively pull the Democratic lever. Their vestigial loyalty is the result of what has been the Democratic Party's strategy for over a century. The bargain back in...

Big jobs: No experience needed Sunday, October 10, 2004 It's no surprise that Sean Murray-Nolan's job title - "executive director of the office of the governor of New Jersey" - seemed rather exalted for a 27-year-old.He made it up.And if you ask Murray-Nolan's colleagues what his $78,000-a-year job actually entailed, you are met with silence. Then chuckling."Well, he may have had that title but it didn't mean squat,'' said one former senior aide to Governor McGreevey.Two former high-ranking McGreevey aides say Murray-Nolan was one of several governor's office employees who were told to fabricate high-sounding - and meaningless - job...